Hi again, JM, and thank you.
My interpretation has been different from yours but I’m keeping an open mind.
A sale as such was always recorded as a “Lease and re-lease”, sometimes described simply as that and sometimes as an “Indenture of Lease and re-lease” and sometimes as an “Absolute conveyance of lease and re-lease”. I’ve looked at a couple of dozen now concerning Ben Singleton because they record his selling of blocks of land at “Singletown” (later Singleton) to establish the town.
In the various documents it is the land that is always the subject of the transaction so it is always the land that is being conveyed from and to (not the money). (My take anyway.) So in the Surrender the land is being conveyed from the three people to Ben Singleton - but not as a sale or as a mortgage. My first thought was that Ben had previously sold the land to the three on terms and that they had somehow defaulted the terms and then surrendered it back to him. The amount is an odd one. Usually they dealt in even pounds or pounds and shillings; I haven’t seen one going down to a number of pence, even for very small portions of land. That was the reason for me thinking that perhaps the Consideration in the Surrender was accounting for the amount owing being altered because of some defalcation (e.g. an amount for interest on unpaid instalments). But I’ll need to find an original document conveying the land to the three to prove that.
Another possibility is that the Surrender is more in keeping with the later use of that term (for some sort of change or correction to be made to the details). This was at about the time that Ben starting selling off town blocks so it could be that Ben had temporarily sublet the land to the three people and then when he decided to subdivide the land he advised them that he was resuming occupation of the land and the Surrender recognised that reoccupation.
Or it may have something else to do with the subdivision.
Or it may have nothing to do with the subdivision.
The trouble with Crown Land title is that there was no one document showing ownership with transactions recorded on it (Certificate of Title). All documents recorded one transaction only (conveyance/lease/mortgage etc) so to evidence ownership you had to have the full “chain of title” which could contain dozens and dozens of documents.
I used to work in a bank and in rural areas so I had some experience with different land titles (many farms still had not been fully converted to Torrens Title in my time) but I hadn’t come across the term Surrender used in the way it is in that transaction. I’ll keep wading through the various images and read up a bit more on the timeline of Ben’s activities. It will become clear eventually. It will, it will!
Thanks again, very much, for your help and thoughtful advice, JM.
Cheers,
Peter